Category: Words To Live By

Sometimes I find it’s best to write about a situation that is providing me angst. I guess you can say I might find it healing. Lately, I have been in somewhat of a quandary where I often have no outlet to talk about something that is becoming quite difficult to deal with.

I’ve been renting all of my living spaces now since September of 2007 when I had moved out of the bed and breakfast I owned at the time. I landed in Massachusetts and lived temporarily with my sister while I searched for the next place to call home. The first location was in Brockton where I moved into a friend’s brother’s home who was renting out a room within it. That lasted only nine months. I then found myself moving again, but this time several towns away in Weymouth and into a much larger space of another person’s home whom I had met in one of my recovery meetings. And just over a year ago, I was forced to move again when that owner decided it was time to stop renting out part of their home. Since then, I have been living in a much larger house just a few miles down the road in the same town from where I had last lived. There, I have had to face unique challenges just as much as I did in my previous living situations but overall, I’ve discovered, I am finding it difficult to live with anyone.

Don’t get me wrong, some living situations are easier for me than others. My last three have been the most difficult though as each of them had me renting out and living in the same space as its owners. Prior to this, I had shared living spaces with many other people over the years, but in each of those cases I was an equal owner or renter and not just a tenant. What that meant was that I also had an equal say on all the decisions that related back to the home. Unfortunately, in my current living situation and the previous two as well, I haven’t had much of a say at all on anything. I will admit that I’m not the easiest person to live with. I could be labeled a neat freak. I like everything to be kept in order. And I don’t like messes or clutter. But with each of those traits also comes a strong set of good values. I always clean up after myself. I try to help out where I can with household chores. And I consistently pay my rent on time.

Sadly, I have found that these good values don’t translate into much of anything when it comes to wanting to feel empowered in these past three homes that I have been living in. What I have discovered is that when an individual owns a home and lives within it, they usually have their own ways of doing things around it. I know I’m definitely that way when I’ve owned one. In these past three rentals, I’ve always felt welcomed initially with the “my home is your home” sentiments. But at some inevitable point, those feelings have always disappeared and I’ve found myself migrating to spending most of my time in my bedroom as that is the only place that really is my own domain. And even then, I have seen it really isn’t.

Over the past year I have had several run-ins with the owner of my current home. I’ve had to face a lot of my own control issues as well where I continuously come face to face with the fact that I’m just a tenant renting a room. While some of my ideas and concerns have been taken into account and used by my home’s owner, many have not. The space I’m given in the driveway is under a tree that birds like to have a field day pooping on, in large glorious amounts. I have asked in many different ways for a resolution and the end result is me being told to go buy a car cover. The house also has a large yard around it which I often spent many hours enjoying throughout last spring, summer, and fall. Unfortunately, I have not been able to lately as for about four weeks now, it has became a hazmat zone with over a ton of dirt dropped on it, a garden that has yet to be built, and piping, tubes, and wiring that lay all around it for a well-based watering system that is supposed to be put in.

Then there is the inside of the house and how I’ve been told more than once that the way I’m doing things isn’t right such as how I dispense water from the fridge, what dishes I put in the dishwasher, how I place the garbage bags around the can, what recyclables I should be or not be putting in its bin, and what kind of treats and tricks I can and can’t offer to their dog. Even more distressing has been a backup key that I loaned the owner several trips ago to get my mail from my PO Box when I was away. It has since been misplaced and no attempt has been made to set time aside to look for it. If it’s not found, it could cost me a sum of money that I will have to pay back to the post office. The response I’ve received from my roommate to that revelation was that I should have made that known to him when it was being loaned.

Ultimately, my landlord/owner/roommate does have the final say in everything here at the home I am living in. It’s their house and their rules. I just know I would be handling things very differently if I was in their shoes. A lot of that has to do with the changes I’ve made in my life in the past year with God being more at the center of my life, then me being more at the center of it. I don’t operate much at all anymore by self-will and self-centeredness and I’m working on letting go of control that I once maintained with such strictness in every area of my life. It has allowed me to accept the many differences that exist between my landlord and I. While he procrastinates and openly will admit he does, I don’t. He also is somewhat of a hoarder of things where I traditionally have let go of excess clutter. In addition, he enjoys a few drinks here and there and has yet to settle down with one person whereas I’m in recovery and a monogamous relationship.

Eventually I will be moving on from here and hopefully living with my partner in his home. Ironically, he and I share a lot more in common with our daily living values with some rare exceptions. But in the long run though, I believe it’s a good thing that I’m still living here as a tenant because it’s helping me to face some of my own control issues that still remain within me. God has also helped me to practice a lot more patience, love, acceptance, and tolerance towards my landlord especially when he makes decisions that affect me negatively.

While we may be quite different on behaviors, ideals and how we generally might handle things, the one thing we do have in common is that we both share a piece of God. We both have a soul that is connected to the same Source. And we both deserve unconditional love. Because of this, I will continue to do my best to treat my landlord with all the love, respect and kindness that God would want me to offer, even in the face of frustration that I have been feeling lately when I’m not offered the same.

Peace, love, light, and joy,

Andrew Arthur Dawson

It happens all the time. People pick on people. Jokes are made at other people’s expenses. Individuals are bullied incessantly. Does anyone really see the cost of this in our world today?

It’s there in the newspapers, the internet, in magazines, in books, and on the television more and more these days. Another suicide, another murder rampage, or another violent attack has happened with someone ranging from a young kid to an older adult. Many of these terrible tragedies are eventually then connected back to being bullied, picked on, or abused by someone else.

I know all about what it feels like to be bullied and picked on.

It’s happened for most of my life.

Sadly, I was one of those kids growing up that was both picked on constantly at school and mentally and emotionally abused by my family as well. I’m not sure which was worse. In my grammar school years, kids just cited me out as an easy target. My books were knocked out of my hands often in the hallways. I was pushed and shoved into lockers, spit on, punched, given wedgies and terrible nicknames, and a whole lot more. At home, with alcoholic parents, my sister and I were easy targets for our parents addiction based drama with the results often being grounded or punished for things we shouldn’t have been.

By the age of 16, I felt it would be easier to die and was thinking about suicide more than not. There were many occasions too that I secretly wished I could hurt these bullies and my parents by making them suffer like I was from each of them. Thankfully, I never did either but as my years passed by, I seemed to become a magnet for being ridiculed and made fun of. In many of my places of employment or things I took part in socially, I was the pawn of other’s jokes for how they felt I looked or what I wore or how I acted. In the relationships I got into, it was no better, and often I was the butt of partner’s and friend’s jokes.

I believe there is only one reason why anyone picks on, makes fun of, or torments anyone else.

While many human beings may deny this, fear and insecurity are pretty rampant within every individual. What’s the best way to take the attention off of one’s own fears and insecurities? By distracting everyone else from seeing them by shifting the attention and focus onto someone else’s. I know this pattern because I’m guilty of it as well. For as much as I was picked on, occasionally over the years, I found someone more insecure then myself to do those same behaviors towards and I saw the results. I watched people close to me that were the pawn of my own jokes and bullying behaviors cry profusely. I’ve seen them shut down for days and weeks because of my own nastiness.

With all the work I’ve been doing to clean my act up, get closer to God, and do God’s will, I don’t like making fun of anyone anymore. I know the damage it causes now. I’m grateful it didn’t result in a serious tragedy either to myself or anyone else. I know for others, they can’t say the same. Some are dead and some are in jail because of it.

I’ve heard so many times in my life that “I shouldn’t take jokes so seriously…” I’ve heard quite often as well that I just seem like an easy target for it and I should just roll with the punches. Tell that to all those people who haven’t been able to handle it like I have and have killed themselves or others because they were picked on one too many times. Unfortunately, much of this type of behavior gets transferred down through many generations in families. Parents bully their kids who then bully other kids to deal with the pain from home and then grow up to be bullies to their own kids as well. The buck has to stop somewhere.

In the past year of my life I’ve seen things so much more clearly. I seek God to help me move beyond this craziness and am trying to heal myself so that I can get out into the world one day soon and help begin to heal others who are still suffering from this madness.

To put it bluntly, being bullied, picked on, made fun of, ridiculed, or abused sucks. It hurts not only the person receiving it, but it does damage to one’s own soul who is doing the behaviors themselves. I have separated myself from many people today because I don’t deserve to be bullied nor do I want to be around anyone who does that type of behavior. And I don’t make fun of anyone anymore at their expense because when I have slipped and gone back into an old behavior like that, I feel the pain in my own heart of how that other person feels from receiving my own poison.

The bottom line is that it’s not cool to put down other people to try to lift up ourselves. It’s not cool to put shadows over someone else’s fears and insecurities when we have so many of our own to still work on. We can prevent much of what is happening in our world today if we can just start working more on releasing our own inner demons in a healthy way that doesn’t hurt anyone else. And maybe then, we won’t make fun of or pick on anyone else, and instead we will just offer them love.

Peace, love, light, and joy,

Andrew Arthur Dawson

There are times I struggle with what to write in this blog. As of this posting, I have done this for 112 days consecutively. On each of those days, I have woken up and had the thought cross my mind at least once what I should talk about in writing for that day. What began as an urging from one of my spiritual teachers, blogging daily has become something much greater for me than just writing about random thoughts or opinions.

Often I wonder if there is anyone perusing any of what I am writing. To date, I haven’t had a single comment from anyone on any of these entires. The spiritual teacher who first recommended I do this has told me to just keep writing and trusting that it’s helping both me and others. So on each and every day, I have one single goal for what I write in my blog. My only intention is to be an inspiration for someone in their own journey of finding healing, hope, and God.

Writing hasn’t always been a passion of mine though. For the longest time, I was unaware I was even able to write anything. I was often recommended by therapists that I was seeing to journal as they would indicate it would be healthy and healing for me. I never quite enjoyed doing that task because what I wrote was just an endless stream of thoughts passing through my brain, none of which were probably organized enough to have anyone be interested in reading them. The first time I ever picked up writing for a purpose beyond journaling was in 2005 when I had just completed a ten day silent retreat in the mountains of Virginia. A friend had recommended that I chronicle the experience in words from the beginning to the end. I took her up on that recommendation and upon completion, I shared with her the results as well as with a few others, one of which was a reporter who wrote articles for a local newspaper who I had met in passing. Interestingly enough, this reporter liked what I had written and asked me to summarize the experience in less than 1000 words. He wanted to share it with his editor for possible submission. A few weeks later, I saw my first article get printed in a column in this local newspaper and the rest was history.

I wrote regularly for about two years after that. I submitted articles monthly for several local newspapers under the tagline of Words To Live By. I was grateful to have gained the experience but even more grateful for the few people that had gotten in contact with me after being inspired by what I had written. Their inspiration had even inspired me to work on and complete my first fiction based novel which fits in the kids to young adult fantasy genre. Unfortunately, my addictions got the best of me beginning around 2007 and I drifted away from writing anything at all for the next six years. That was until January of this year, when I finally garnered enough courage to take that spiritual teacher’s advice and begin writing again.

I’m not sure where writing is going to take me this time around. I have hopes and dreams with it like anyone might in my shoes. But on most days, I just keep on writing with one purpose, to get back into the practice of what I once did with great passion and joy, which was my desire to spread hope and love on this planet. This planet needs a lot more of that and as my hands type these words, I feel somehow that at least I’m doing more of the work that I believe God sent me here to do and less on how I’ve spent most of my life where I was running from it. I’m grateful to God for this gift and for those who may find any hope and healing in what it is I continue to write.

Peace, love, light, and joy,

Andrew Arthur Dawson